Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald
[BenIndy editor’s note: Everyone should attend this meeting, to hear Valero explain itself, and to share with Valero’s managers and employees the genuine questions and concerns we have about crude by rail. The criticisms of Valero’s proposal are many and varied, and represent the concerns of everyday folks and highly trained scientists and professionals. See Project Review. To join with others who oppose crude by rail, sign the petition here or at SafeBencia.org. – Roger Straw]

Community meeting planned in Benicia on Valero crude-by-rail project

By Tony Burchyns, Vallejo Times-Herald 03/19/2014

BENICIA — The Valero Community Advisory Panel will host a community meeting Monday to discuss Valero’s controversial crude-by-rail project.

According to Valero Benicia refinery officials, the meeting’s purpose is to inform the community, especially Benicia residents, about what Valero believes is the importance of the project, both to the refinery and the city.

It will be held from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. at Ironworkers Union Local 378, 3120 Bayshore Road. Because of limited space, RSVPs are required by calling 707-654-9745 or via email to info@beniciacbr.com. For more information, visit www.beniciacbr.com.

The panel consists of Valero officials and members of the City Council, school board, business community and community at large. It was established by an agreement executed in 2000 between the city and Valero to provide an ongoing means of communication about issues of mutual concern.

The subject of the meeting will be Valero’s proposed rail off-loading facility that would allow the refinery to receive up to 70,000 barrels of crude oil per day by train. The project’s draft environmental impact report is due out next month.

Project critics have raised concerns about rail safety and the possible use of highly flammable Bakken crude from North Dakota. Critics also have raised concerns about the possible use of Canadian tar sands oil, regarded as more polluting than other crudes.

An opposition group, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, have organized events and launched a website — www.safebenicia.org — to give voice to these concerns.

Valero officials, however, have repeatedly said the project wouldn’t increase emissions. They argue it would generate jobs and help the refinery stay competitive through better access to North American crude stocks.

Phillips 66 rail project – explosive risks far outweigh the benefits

In 1955, San Luis Obispo County approved a plan to bring crude oil to its Nipomo Mesa Santa Maria Refinery via pipeline. Over the years, the Nipomo refinery was operated by Conoco Phillips, without issue, under agreed-upon limitations and protections.

In 2012, Conoco Phillips spun off Phillips 66 as a separate company. On the cover of its very first annual report, that new company’s executives stated “We’re taking a classic in a new direction.” That direction has become painfully evident with the company’s proposed “rail terminal project” for the refinery in Nipomo, which, as far as its impact on SLO County, would be a dramatic transformation in Phillips’ business model and method of operation.

Their revamped corporate business model is to maximize profits by turning our nation’s rail lines into inherently unsafe “tank car pipelines” to take advantage of the new flood of lower-cost Canadian tar sands 1 and domestic fracked crude oils.

The scope of what Phillips intends:

And that’s the strategy Phillips intends to implement at their Nipomo refinery. Instead of bringing in crude by pipeline, they propose bringing in a half-billion gallons (488,000,000) of crude per year, via 20,800 rail tank cars. In addition, those cars may very well contain Bakken crude — the explosive crude that has destroyed lives, property and the environment in towns across the U.S. and Canada. Phillips has repeatedly refused to rule out the delivery of Bakken crude to its Nipomo refinery.

Plus, the crude would travel through SLO County via DOT-111 cars — tankers that federal officials have called “tragically flawed, causing potential damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials during derailments.”2

We suggest you view the devastating impact these trains have already had on communities. Go to this site – http://tinyurl.com/mmbotzu.

The mile-long trains would move from north to south through SLO County. Here are just some locations where citizens could almost reach out and touch the tank cars, and the approximate distances:

We believe the vastly increased risks that this proposal brings to the citizens and businesses throughout SLO County and the Central Coast are unacceptable. The risks of massive explosions, fires, oil spills, and air, noise, odor and light pollution, enormously outweigh the benefits the plan bestows on an individual business entity — that is, Phillips 66. Any honest risk, benefit analysis would lead to that conclusion.

It’s not about “jobs,” it’s about implementing a crude-by-rail strategy:

Phillips is holding the specter of lost jobs (they employ 140 people) over the heads of the citizens and officials of SLO County, should the Nipomo rail terminal project be denied. Let’s look at the issues:

• Phillips has said they require the project because California crude oil sources to feed their pipeline have been in decline for more than 20 years, since 1987. This time-span was stated by Phillips at the February 24th South County Advisory Council meeting, so they’ve known about the decline for more than two decades.

• Yet, around 2009, Phillips applied for a 10 percent increase in production at their Nipomo refinery, all to be brought in via pipeline. So why, if they knew for two decades that there was a decline in their raw material, would they recently apply for an increase in production, specifically from pipeline sources?

• The reason — the entire “declining California crude” argument, accompanied by the potential loss of jobs, is a red herring. It’s designed to distract us from the real reason they have for bringing in crude oil by rail.

• In fact, while California crude oil production has declined somewhat as a source for their refinery, the amount of crude processed at Nipomo in 2012 was exactly the same as it was 10 years prior in 2003, and it all continued to come in via pipeline. In addition, applications now abound in SLO County for new crude oil drilling sites.

• The real reason for requesting a Nipomo RAIL terminal, is that Phillips “corporate” has changed their business model. And their executives have proudly called it their “crude-by-rail strategy 3.” Their desire is to take advantage of low-cost, high-profit, extremely volatile, fracked shale oil. And the only way to quickly implement it all is via “crude-by-rail.”

Our health and safety trumps Phillips’ new business model:

Phillips wants to introduce a “new normal” into SLO County. That new normal includes potential explosions, fires, pollution and health hazards that do not currently exist here.

If a company that had never conducted business in SLO County came to the supervisors and planning commissioners tomorrow, with the same new business model and associated risks, we’re certain it would be rejected. The safety and well-being of our citizens trumps the new direction in which Phillips intends to take us all. That’s why our planning commissioners must vote “no project.”

Rail Safety Of Bay Area Oil Shipments Doubted

March 24, 2014 2:20 PM

A KPIX 5 crew captured this video of Bakken crude oil getting unloaded from a train at a rail yard in Richmond. (CBS)

SSAN MATEO (KCBS) – Last summer’s oil train accident in Quebec that killed 47 people has lawmakers and others in the Bay Area concerned that it could happen here as the volume of crude oil from fracking and other petroleum products arriving from North Dakota and Canada to local refineries surges.

On Monday’s 25th anniversary of the 1990 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, State Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) said he fears the response to major oil spill will [fall] far short.

“Some of the trains that coming in—the tanker trains that crude oil will have 2.7 million gallons of oil on those trains,” he said.

In 2011, about 9,000 tank cars filled with crude oil were shipped into California by rail. In the next two years, that number is expected to jump to more than 200,000, according to the California Energy Commission.

About 10 percent of the oil will be headed to the five Bay Area refineries.

While most agree the response to water-born spills is good – the Cosco Busan tanker that struck the Bay Bridge in 2007 as an example – inland spills, however, are inherently different.

“When this oil is coming through California at the volume that it’s coming and the magnitude … we want to make sure that our citizens are adequately protected. We really don’t have the resources in place to do it,” Hill said.

“Ethanol is just as toxic, hazardous chemical and there’s nothing in place to deal with that type of a spill.”

Curt Clumpner is a member of the Fairfield-based International Bird Rescue and got his experience during the 1990 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. He said the trains that traverse California do so alongside our rivers.

“It obviously increases the risk in terms of the environment and wildlife,” he said.

KCBS KPIX 5 and San Francisco Chronicle Insider Phil Matier said there are environmental activists who are against oil as a rule and will use such a possibility to scare people while the oil industry will likely oversimplify the issue by saying there is no need for concern.

“The truth is somewhere in between. We’ve had ethanol and we’ve had crude oil come around before but not in this volume.”